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I tried a little free writing this evening, I had a snippet of an idea and as you are supposed to with free writing I just went for it. I have cleaned it up a little, so its readable and the words are recognisable.

So here it is, i’m not sure what to call it but suggestions are welcome.

Harry reached into his pocket pulling out a crumpled packet of Krakatoa, he took one, bit it and inhaled deeply. He lent against the fence surveying his empire, eyeing up the crew he had built.

When he had found them they had been nothing but thugs, at best a collective of knuckleheads that thought only with their fists and dealt with the consequences afterwards.

It was he, Harry Blemfield that had bought them together, built them into something that was in charge; something that was equal parts feared and respected. Even the filth sidestepped when he and his boys went past.

Simple Joe had been the first to join.

With hands the size of hams, a gap toothed grin and a lazy left eye he was never going to be considered the brains of the outfit but he was smarter than he looked. He knew when and where to land a pinch and rarely got caught. If someone hadn’t paid up, Joe was Harry’s go to guy to get the goods.

After that came the Getaway man, Cool Steve and his brother Tony the Charmer.

If Steve couldn’t drive it, it wasn’t worth driving. When his feet where on the pedals it was like they had a life of their own, a blur, poetry in motion. His favorite was the red LTC Coupe, it was fast, had good handling and a trailer for when they hit a big haul.

Tony could talk, really talk. He knew words that the others had never even heard of. A flash of his pearly whites and a few big words to baffle the law and four times out of five Tony would get the whole group out of trouble!

Last of all was Dylan.

He was the builder, the creator. Harry might come up with the ideas but it was Dylan that turned them into a reality, put the ABC’s of the plan together. When they had knocked over Milly’s bottle and basket, it was Dylan that had found them the Old Fort to lay low in afterwards and enjoy their spoils.

Today was the last day, after their latest escapade they had made the big time. They were going “up town”.

Josh Fuller ran up “town”, he was big time. His brother Big Dan had been in charge for a number of years, but he had moved on to bigger and better things leaving Josh to continue his legacy. Harry had set a meet for later today to hammer out how things were going to work; he knew he would have to give Josh some kick back on anything they earned. It was only for a while, Josh would move on eventually.

For Xmas as part of my Quest to write SFU I asked for a number of new books to help me really improve my writing.

I am well aware that both the requesting and the subsequent reading of said books is the equivalent of cleaning the skirting boards whilst the washing up hasn’t been done for a month, but some of it has to stick right?

I haven’t quite managed to write some SFU every night so there is still some room for improvement but I have added around 1000 new words to the story. Its a little rough around the edges, will definitely require some serious polish, but it has helped moved the story on.

Where I was somewhat stuck like a broken record, I seem to have got it spinning again.

I’m a little concerned with how much of what I have written has focused on characters outside of Jezzrael, and how some of the story ideas that I have been having are clearly not part of this core story, but on a positive note all of this has meant I have got the creative juices flowing a little easier and as time goes on I think my writing should increase in both quality and quantity.

Like this:

I love fantasy books, and it’s because of this that I chose this genre to take my stab at writing. As with most genres there are certain inevitable truths that pepper the pages of almost every tale, and as someone who has read a lot of fantasy I have come across them all.

It was these reoccurring stereotypes, even in the most excellent of books and series that made me want to try something different in my own writing.

I am sure that despite my best intentions at least one of the many fantasy clichés will creep its way in despite my best efforts to prevent them, all I can try and do is recognise that at least attempt to make them mu own take on that cliché or utilise it to create an unexpected twist.

Like this:

For the first time in months I booted up Scrivener (my still trial version! Shows you long I have not written for!) and looked at “So Far Untitled” I started reading through what I had written already cleaned up a few sentences, some spelling mistakes and character names that seemed to have crept in where they shouldn’t. I had every intention of doing some actual writing but an hour latter realised that even though I had the program open I was still procrastinating.

So I closed all the existing work stopped reading and started writing. I managed a solid 600 words, its not great and on a brief look back most if not all of it will need to be rewritten or scrapped but and this is the important bit, it was still 600 new words, a completely new section of the story and a little back story to both an character and the magic system of my world.

Whilst this event may never make it into the finished (if it ever gets that far) story, the fact that I have written now means it has happened. Its and event that influences the character it relates to and something to think about when writing them.

600 words isn’t a lot, but it does mean that technically SFU is 10% longer than it was this morning. If I can keep this up then who knows by the time i’m 60 I might just have something ready to read!

Like this:

So its been a while, I have been on one of my many hiatuses. I could try and come up with a reasonable, believable and understandable excuse for not posting in over 2 months and with all that has gone on during that time I imagine I could convince myself that that it was true, but the truth is simply that I am easily distracted.

This lack of commitment led to the missing a day or two of posting, which then led to a lack of motivation to continue to post, which in turn led to completely neglecting my wish to write and the half backed story that that is buried somewhere deep inside my brain!

What has led to this resurgence, this willingness to return to the blog, my various ramblings and a renewed interest in pursuing the “So Far Untitled” you might ask? Well its a couple of things.

A couple of weeks back I spent and afternoon with my best friend, I haven’t seen him in a long while and after catching up on the usual topics we turned to the subject of writing. It was his blog that first encouraged me to start my own, and his reasons for starting were similar to my own. A way to unlock his own stories in his head.

We began talking about a project that he wanted to start, some ideas he had and how it might start moving it forwards. This in turn led on to questions about my own progress or lack of it.

The conversation continued with the two of us and my Wife bouncing ideas, questions and opinions across the table. It was this exchange that got me thinking once more about writing and I am hopeful that this injection of ideas will help me to get back to writing!

On top of this not that long ago a friend of mine not only finished his book, but has also published it! I thoroughly recommend that you give it a read! –http://www.karrote.co.uk/

Well what you know it worked, still not exactly where I would like it to be but one hell of an upside from both the previous weeks.

Last week I said my aim was to try and bring some more structure to my story, perhaps stop “pantsing” and instead do a little “plotting”

I’ll be honest that didn’t happen.

What helped me achieve my additional words count this week was utilising Free Writing, I’m sure that you all know what it is, perhaps you have done it yourself in your own work, or it was something that you did at school long ago.

I have used it in a two ways, the first is the usual fashion. I sat at the PC started a timer of 10 minutes and just wrote, no stopping, no deleting no spell checks. I just wrote about what ever came to mind and didn’t stop for anything.

At the end I had a rather charming if bizarre 873 words about Young Wizard named “Hippopotimus angry bird the 3rd” or Hippo for short (yes I know I spelled it wrong, no spell checks I told ya!)

Obviously this approach doesn’t exactly work when adding to your story/novel/life’s work. Spelling mistakes, punctuation and grammar all need to be correct and after all where does a pointy hat wearing Hippo fit into your story anyways? But you can use pretty much the same idea to get your self going, after all how much of a 1st draft actually make its into the final one? Does removing a few more sentences during the editing process add that much additional work? Plus you never know what gems might come to you whilst you’re on a spree.

I guess the correct term for this is Directed Free writing, instead of literally writing the first thing that comes into your head but from a specific starting point.

Below are the “rules” for Free Writing, if you are stuck or finding yourself blocked I suggest its worth a try it seems to have helped me somewhat!

Write nonstop for a set period of time (10–20 minutes).

Do not make corrections as you write.

Keep writing, even if you have to write something like, “I don’t know what to write.”